An Inland Revenue Department worker who sold the private details of taxpayers to debt collectors also gathered data from the Department of Social Welfare.
Sopo Matagi, aged 31, is serving nine months in jail after pleading guilty in May to selling information from the IRD.
Yesterday, she told Auckland District Court that she sold addresses and phone numbers "hundreds" of times from the IRD - and that she routinely went to the DSW to get details on beneficiaries.
Matagi was speaking as a crown witness in the trial of Greenlane company director Terrence Cyril Charleston, aged 41, who has pleaded not guilty to 85 counts of using corruptly disclosed official information.
Charleston, of Amalgamated Repossessions, said he merely employed Matagi as a tracing agent to find bad debtors, and he had no idea that she was getting the details illegally.
Matagi told the court that Amalgamated Repossessions faxed or posted her lists of names which she looked up on an IRD computer.
She would find the taxpayer details, and was paid $10 for each correct address she supplied.
Over one period of "a couple of weeks" she paid off an $800 loan from Charleston by supplying him with information.
When prosecutor Steve Bonnar asked her about the meaning of one document, Matagi said the IRD computer listed the person as receiving a benefit.
She had filled in a form and sent it to the DSW "to see if they had an address" for the person.
Matagi said she wrote to the DSW whenever the IRD computer showed that a debtor she was searching for was on a benefit.
Defence lawyer Barbara Hunt: "That's information that's available to you as a worker at IRD?"
Matagi: "Yes."
The court also saw a video interview between Charleston and a policeman. Charleston told the officer that he employed Matagi to chase "GNA debtors" (gone, no address).
He knew that she worked at the IRD, but thought she was employed there as an investigator and the information she was giving him was legal.
Charleston said Matagi was initially pretty good at finding debtors. He was not suspicious of her sources because he employed other agents who were as good or better, he said.
The judge-only trial is before Judge Graham Hubble and is scheduled to finish tomorrow.
Repo man paid for traces: tax worker
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.